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Scientists suggest that cancer is purely man-made

October 15, 2010

Cancer is a modern, man-made disease caused by environmental factors such as pollution and diet, a study by University of Manchester scientists has strongly suggested.

A study of remains and literature from ancient Egypt and Greece and earlier periods — carried out at the University of Manchester’s KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology and published in Nature — includes the first histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy.

Finding only one case of the disease in the investigation of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, with few references to cancer in literary evidence, proves that cancer was extremely rare in antiquity. The disease rate has risen massively since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer — proving that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.

Professor Rosalie David, at the Faculty of Life Sciences, said: “In industrialized societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle.”

She added: “The important thing about our study is that it gives a historical perspective to this disease. We can make very clear statements on the cancer rates in societies because we have a full overview. We have looked at millennia, not one hundred years, and have masses of data.”

The data includes the first ever histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy by Professor Michael Zimmerman, a visiting Professor at the KNH Centre, who is based at Villanova University in the United States. He diagnosed rectal cancer in an unnamed mummy, an “ordinary” person who had lived in the Dakhleh Oasis during the Ptolemaic period (200-400 CE).

Professor Zimmerman said: “In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as indicating their rarity in antiquity, indicating that cancer causing factors are limited to societies affected by modern industrialization”.

The team studied both mummified remains and literary evidence for ancient Egypt but only literary evidence for ancient Greece as there are no remains for this period, as well as medical studies of human and animal remains from earlier periods, going back to the age of the dinosaurs.

Evidence of cancer in animal fossils, non-human primates and early humans is scarce — a few dozen, mostly disputed, examples in animal fossils, although a metastatic cancer of unknown primary origin has been reported in an Edmontosaurus fossil while another study lists a number of possible neoplasms in fossil remains. Various malignancies have been reported in non-human primates, but do not include many of the cancers most commonly identified in modern adult humans.

It has been suggested that the short life span of individuals in antiquity precluded the development of cancer. Although this statistical construct is true, individuals in ancient Egypt and Greece did live long enough to develop such diseases as atherosclerosis, Paget’s disease of bone, and osteoporosis, and, in modern populations, bone tumors primarily affect the young.

Another explanation for the lack of tumors in ancient remains is that tumors might not be well preserved. Dr. Zimmerman has performed experimental studies indicating that mummification preserves the features of malignancy and that tumors should actually be better preserved than normal tissues. In spite of this finding, hundreds of mummies from all areas of the world have been examined and there are still only two publications showing microscopic confirmation of cancer. Radiological surveys of mummies from the Cairo Museum and museums in Europe have also failed to reveal evidence of cancer.

As the team moved through the ages, it was not until the 17th century that they found descriptions of operations for breast and other cancers and the first reports in scientific literature of distinctive tumours have only occurred in the past 200 years, such as scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps in 1775, nasal cancer in snuff users in 1761, and Hodgkin’s disease in 1832.

Professor David, who was invited to present her paper to UK Cancer Czar Professor Mike Richards and other oncologists at this year’s UK Association of Cancer Registries and National Cancer Intelligence Network conference, said: “Where there are cases of cancer in ancient Egyptian remains, we are not sure what caused them. They did heat their homes with fires, which gave off smoke, and temples burned incense, but sometimes illnesses are just thrown up.”

She added: “The ancient Egyptian data offers both physical and literary evidence, giving a unique opportunity to look at the diseases they had and the treatments they tried. They were the fathers of pharmacology so some treatments did work

“They were very inventive and some treatments thought of as magical were genuine therapeutic remedies. For example, celery was used to treat rheumatism back then and is being investigated today. Their surgery and the binding of fractures were excellent because they knew their anatomy: there was no taboo on working with human bodies because of mummification. They were very hands on and it gave them a different mindset to working with bodies than the Greeks, who had to come to Alexandria to study medicine.”

She concluded: “Yet again extensive ancient Egyptian data, along with other data from across the millennia, has given modern society a clear message – cancer is man-made and something that we can and should address.”

Comments (11)

Yes, but what else do the authors suggest? I can’t access the paper as I would have to pay for it. As a student who’s Athens account works for everything BUT the Nature website during both my BSc and my current MSc (at different universities), I can’t afford the paper for the sake of internet discussion. If it would be made available then we could assess the paper’s findings ourselves. If there’s anything that science has taught me then it’s trust the methodology, not the conclusion (or the abstract, which is all I can see).

It’s good of the editor to point out that “The authors apparently prefer to appeal to authority (“Cancer Czar” and “Nature does not publish weak papers”) and to emotions (popularity) rather than address the important questions raised here.” It’s a shame that supposed professors aren’t as transparent and analytical.

I received the following statement from a spokesperson for the authors:

“If you would care to read the paper in Nature, you will see that the team gathered a lot of data to show there was very little evidence of cancer in ancient times and greatly increased rates following the Industrial Revolution. The team thus poses the question whether this apparent increase in occurrence of the disease may be related to the presence of carcinogens in modern society. Nature does not publish weak papers. In addition, Prof David presented her paper to UK Cancer Czar Professor Mike Richards and other oncologists at this year’s UK Association of Cancer Registries and National Cancer Intelligence Network conference, where it was well received. This was robust academic research which we and the team at Nature believe should be considered by the public.”

The authors apparently prefer to appeal to authority (“Cancer Czar” and “Nature does not publish weak papers”) and to emotions (popularity) rather than address the important questions raised here.

Ok, a few objections:
1) a lot of tumors tend to appear mostly in old age, so since the average lifespan was shorter 5000 years ago it was more likely to die for other causes .
2) If I’m not mistaken organs were extracted from mummies (Hollywood docet) – did they examine the recipients for the organs as well? And how precise is an authopsy done millennia after the death of the subject?
3) Correlation doesn’t mean causation – even if there were less tumors in the past, the reason could be entirely different – maybe a mutation that makes us more resistant to x but more vulnerable to y appeared and it was so advantageous that it spread to most human population (rather farfetched but it’s just to show my point).

As someone who was told 5 months ago that I had inoperable metastasized melanoma, with 3 tumours on my liver, and had a 50% chance of surviving 5 months – I am happy to report that after changing from my carnivorous diet to a RAVE vegan diet, my liver showed clear on the scan last week (as did my entire abdominal cavity).
I still have a couple of small tumours in my lymph glands near the original melanoma site behind my jaw, and they are coming out next week.

From the reading I have done over the last few months, and my own personal experience, it seems that diet does have a major role in cancer expression; and certainly there are other risk factors, many of them, some of which occur naturally in some places. And it seems that a healthy, relaxed, and well nourished body can deal with most cancers most of the time. Stress and poor diet seem to be major risk factors.

As a fisherman, I have seen tumours on some fish, but very rarely – certainly less than 1 in 100,000 individuals (I handled about 5 million individual adult fish in my 17 years at sea, and am guessing I saw less than 10 cases of tumours) [I do have a BSc in zoology, and a reasonable knowledge of anatomy].

The statement that there is nothing in nature that can cause cancer is risible on its face. How about UV rays for starters? Do you edit this journal or just put politically correct crap up? I’ve been recommending you cats to all my friends but with obvious drivel like this I”m stopping. Unbelievable.

This might just be a naive conclusion. Sure it might be that we live in a different situation that as we did a few millenia ago, based on diet or exercise or bad living habits or pollution.

But there may be an other simpler explantion – an explanation that will make people feel decidedly feel uncomfortable. In fact most people will reject this explanation because ‘frankly, the idea offends them’.

In nature when herbivores, for example moose in Yellowstone park, are not routinely hunted by wolves, they develop massive genetic diseases in 2-3 generations. This is a common fact. ALL animal species, as soon as not subject to selective culling by predators, suffer from steady generative disorders in just a few generations.

Humans are by and large not subject to selective culling by predators. Sure some political parties would be FIRST to implement this practice but as far as I can tell this is not common practice at this day and age.

Thus I conclude that the human species, especially in countries that knew relative affluence for several generations, are subject to widespread genetic deterioriation, across the board. Things like asthma, depression, migraines, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, dental degeneracy, deformities, eye problems – these are all typical deformities you see in ‘inbred’ or ‘underbred’ animals of any kind. Humans are no different genetically from animals. Even if the implication is offensive and too big to accept (and leads to extremely offensive or unpalatable conclusions) we must look at the problem honestly.

Do I advocate culling? Of course not. But as we move into the 21st century I do advocate an analysis whether or not this problem exists, whether or not my hypothesis is valid, if valid how much this problem is costing society, what measures could be used to treat the problem, how much would those measures be cost effective against the problem itself, and how could these be implemented in a transparent, democratic, moral and societally harmonious manner.

My proposal has been clear for some time – develop genetic treatments to select genetic frailty before conception, cheaply enough to make sense from a cost-benefit analysis. Then offer these treatments to all prospective parents, and ask these parents

‘don’t you want to give your child that extra advantage over all those other kids in life’ ?

Enough parents will say yes to start a race to the top. We’ll all benefit as a result. Maybe in a few decades we might even start retroactively upgrading and patching existing baseline humans.